Windows Media Player 11 – Free download or upgrade to WMP 11

Windows Media Player 11 is the version released by Microsoft for Windows XP and Vista and it now offers all the features that made the iTunes popular with media lovers. Download medial player 11 for Windows XP and Vista for free. If you don’t have the latest version of this improved windows media player running on your computer, you can either download it for free or upgrade to it from your current version and enjoy your music, videos and photos.

If you already have Windows Media Player 10 installed on your PC, and you like to upgrade, then find below an easy method to download or update to WMP 11. If you are on Windows XP or Vista, we earlier covered an article on how to download and use WMP 11.

If you are on windows 7, you will already have the latest version of Microsoft’s free multimedia player that comes bundled together with the OS! However, if you are on windows 7 N or KN Editions, you could enable WMP 12 on your computer by downloading the media feature pack for free.You can also get skins that will make WMP 11 to look like the media player in Windows 7.

How to upgrade to WMP 11?

If you have Windows Media Player 10 on your Windows XP, you may follow the steps outlined below to upgrade to the next version, without the need for Windows Genuine Advantage Validation (WGA Validation).

Open the older version of Windows Media Player and navigate to Tools => Options.

Click on ‘Check for updates once a day.’ Press Apply and then OK.

After some time, a windows pops up asking you to upgrade to a newer version.

Click OK and the System will download Media Player 11 and and install it.

After installing the media player, restart your PC.

After restarting your PC, Click on Start => Search, choose ‘All files and folders’ and search for LegitLibM.dll. This DLL is usually located in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player folder.

Right click LegitLibM.dll and rename it to any other name. (For eg, legitlib.dll)

Run WMP11 and click on validate though you may get a message ‘unable to validate’, you can ignore it and click OK.

The program will then lead you to settings or configuration and after you do that, windows Media Player 11 is ready to use.

That is all folks! Enjoy upgrading to Media player 11.

Microsoft offers a number of free skins to change the looks of Windows media player 11 as often as you may like. They also offer some stunning visualizations to match the music being played.You may experience these in the “Now playing Mode” of the media player. Other than skins and visualizations, One of the significant personalization features offered by WMP is the number of plug-ins to enhance the quality of DVD playback and audio effects.

You can not only plays songs and music from CDs and DVDs but you can also stream it to external devices like Xbox 360. If you are planning for a vacation, you can rip all the favorite songs from your CD or DVD collection and burn the copied songs and music to another CD and carry it with you, wherever you go. If you own a portable media player, you can alternatively sync all the media files to such player and carry it with you to enjoy music on the move.

As with iTunes or any other media player, Windows Media Player 11 makes it easy to neatly organize your songs, music and videos into libraries and even provides a built-in search functionality to quickly search for any media file and play it immediately.

All these features makes Windows Media Player 11 a good default player to use in windows XP and vista. However, ff you do like to uninstall it and use another player, check out the article on how to uninstall media player 11.